It's day 107 in the NICU, and Skyler has made miraculous strides. Still looking forward to day 1 at home though :)

Skyler got his feeding tube out! He's now on his own schedule and taking all his feedings by mouth. He used to have to eat every three hours. Turns out he'd rather eat more in one setting and sleep for four hours. Not a bad schedule. We'll see if it stays that way once he stops taking bottles at night and starts breastfeeding all the time. Either way is alright with me. I'm just happy he loves to eat. 

He now weighs six pounds seven ounces! He will be four months old on May 16th. His due date is May 11th. 

Isn't that crazy? What a miracle. I have to remind myself of that every time I get antsy for him to come home, which, now, is quite often. My day consists of going to the hospital between 8 and 11am and leaving by 7pm. Chris gets off work in Salt Lake at 5pm. He meets me at the hospital and we leave together at 6:45pm. 


From 6:45 to 7:45am/pm, the nurses have shift change and we're not allowed in the NICU at that time. I'm pretty tired by the time we leave, but around 9 or 10 at night, I'm ready to go back again. I usually don't but the past couple nights I've been having a harder time. Skyler has three large hernias and they make his bowel movements extremely uncomfortable and, at times, painful. I worry about him. 

The other night I was cleaning our room and I picked up Skyler's dirty clothes and put them in the hamper. They smelled just like him. 


The next night Chris and I went to the hospital at midnight.

We didn't get back until 4:30am. Chris was dead tired but he went with me anyway; he didn't want me to have to drive alone. How sweet and thoughtful of him. He takes good care of his little family :)

So that story-- and the fact that Skyler's due date is less than two weeks away-- sparks the obvious question: 

When are we going to get pregnant again so our kids can practically be twins? 

No. just kidding...

When can Skyler come home???

 Well, I don't have the exact answer but I do have a very optimistic guess:

He'll be home in a week and a half. 

Thought I'd throw that out there. Yes, that's extremely optimistic, but I can't help think that he's coming home sooner rather than later.

A few posts back, I made a checklist of what Skyler has to do before he can come home. I left two things out-- interestingly enough, they are the two things still keeping him at the hospital.

The first one has to do with the slow development of his eyes. You probably know that his lungs and eyes weren't ready for oxygen exposure for so long so early. This caused what they call retina of prematurity (ROP). It's a ridge of extra blood vessels that started and stopped growing. If the ridge gets thick enough it can cause the blood vessels to tear away from the retina, resulting in blindness. 


An optometrist checks Skyler's eyes every week to see if the ridge is getting worse, and how far the retinal blood vessels have grown around the wall of his eye. In order for Skyler to go home, the vessels must have grown into, what they call, zone three. Also, the ROP has to be regressing or he'll need to have laser eye surgery. 


The good news is that his ROP is regressing. That's a relief. But his blood vessels have been in zone two for six weeks. He has an eye exam tomorrow and I'm feeling pretty optimistic about it. I guess I've made that pretty clear with my "week and a half" estimate.

The second thing keeping him there is his breathing pattern. We've learned that premature babies, especially ones as early as 23 weeks, have a tendency to stop breathing for a period of time, long enough that their heart rate drops below a 100. 


In order for Skyler to come home, he has to go seven days without having an A and B, as they call them. If the nurses have to remind him to breathe, or give him breaths with a machine, then his countdown starts all over again.


He's on day three.


The good news is that the nurses say this should resolve itself before his eyes are fully developed. 

Me staring at Skyler's monitor.
The beeping doesn't get to me as much anymore, but I still can't help but  look up at it.

Okay, I wanted to list Skyler's Going Home Checklist that I made before, with a few revisions:

• Be in zone three.
• No A's and B's for seven days
• Learn to swallow and breathe at the same time
• Gain weight while breastfeeding/ taking all feedings by mouth
• Maintain his own temperature

Optional things on the checklist:

• Get off the oxygen machine(optional) -- He's still on oxygen but it turns out that he doesn't have to get off it before coming home. They say he will most likely come home on oxygen.  I didn't think he would before. That's why I've never mentioned it.
• Surgery to fix his hernias (optional)--He can go home and come back for the surgery in three months but they're bothering him so much that we want him to have it as soon as possible.

  There you have it. We'll see what tomorrow brings. Hopefully it brings an optometrist with good news :)